Kyathos with the Twelve Gods

Around 520 BC, the Athenian workshop of the potter Nikosthenes was making shapes for a particular market. This small cup with a tall looping handle, a kyathos, was one of them. The shape was developed from Etruscan models and made for export, and this one duly ended up in a tomb at Vulci.

Around the bowl stand 12 gods in pairs. Zeus is with Hebe or perhaps Iris, Hephaistos with Aphrodite, Herakles with Athena, Poseidon with Amphitrite or Demeter, Ares with Hera or Hestia. Dionysos stands at the centre among vine tendrils, with Hermes beside him, holding a large lotus bud, and every goddess except Athena offers her partner a flower. The Italian epigraphist Margherita Guarducci linked the scene to the Anthesteria, the spring festival of Dionysos in Athens. On the rim the painter wrote that he was Lydos, and a slave.